


Daily Commute

by Womble1



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen, London Underground, Travel Problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:47:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28899138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Womble1/pseuds/Womble1
Kudos: 5





	Daily Commute

It was just your common or garden Tuesday, which you can take as shorthand for runaway highspeed public transport of unspecified nature. They were practiced at this, worrying really when you thought about it, there really ought to be some fail safes in place if every mode of transport was determined to reach new speed and endurance records. 

Today's public transport in need of assistance was an underground train which was attempting to give the hadron collider a run for its money whilst completing ever increasingly fast laps of the eastbound central line. They went with a classic, chase it around the tunnels for a bit until they realised that it was very quickly going to outpace the dragonfly pod. They couldn't just fill the tunnel with nano concrete, firstly because there were people on board who wouldn't take kindly to being plastered against the inside of the tube train due to an abrupt stop. Secondly the tunnels were very very old, Brains was quoting things about historical importance, and Victorian brick composition and disintegration rates. 

John and EOS had been attempting to hack into the onboard computer in the hope of reasoning with it, but like any good Londoner knows, there is no signal in the black hole that is the London underground. Scott had decided to do what he does best, throw himself into the carriage and see if that made things any clearer. It did not, the only thing it achieved was to give Virgil more reasons to internalise his use of expletives. Somebody suggested flinging Thunderbird four into the tunnels, but that didn’t seem to come from any constructive reasoning, and had more to do with watching Gordon's face at the suggestion of trashing Four, and possibly its pilot, once again. Virgil put his foot down at this, sometimes his brothers could be such wind-up merchants. 

Brains thankfully was the voice of reason that cut through the brotherly hubbub. He laid out a plan that made use of extremely strong magnets from the Pod configuration mechanisms, and a few other components to effectively kick start the manual breaking and stall the electronic brain of the train into a gradual reduction in speed. All in all a very civilised result, and Scott was very happy as it meant he was required to be in the train carriage and it hadn't been a foolhardy move with no use in the overall rescue, ( not that he had known that when he threw himself in there, but that was an argument for another day, Virgil kept a list, it just got longer).

Through the combined calculations of Brains, John and EOS they even managed to get the train to stop at a convenient station, so Virgil and Gordon could get onboard and check the health of all the passengers before passing them off to the ambulance service up on ground level. As Gordon escorted the last passenger off the train, Virgil got stiffly up from his knees with the first aid kit. He straightened himself out just in time to see the doors slide shut and barely had time to catch himself as the train shunted away from the station. 

Well shit, pandemonium broke out over the comms as his brothers realised Virgil had just left the station. Scott was demanding status updates from John, who had diverted his attention to an escalating situation on the other side of the globe having assumed his brothers had wrapped things up on the underground. Plans involving ripping the ceiling off a section of track, or flooding the tracks were being thrown about by an increasingly frantic commander. He needed solutions people, Think! In the time that it took to mobilize the available brain cells, and hearing no response from Virgil, everyone was starting to think the worse. Scotts plans were becoming increasingly drastic in their composition. All the drama meant it took a while for anyone to hear Virgil. 

“Hey guys, is there any chance you could pick me up?”

“We’re working on a plan Virgil, don't worry, we're going to get you out” Scott was using THE voice, the one that instilled confidence and brooked no argument.

“Well I’m at South Kensington Station when you get a minute, no rush”

While the world of International Rescue was in panic mode, Virgil had calmly got off the train as it stopped at the next station. Since he hadn't purchased a ticket for his first ride, he felt a little bad getting back on the westbound train, also, he didn't really feel like pushing his luck with tube trains tonight, who knew where he would end up.


End file.
